Denouement
by Fair-Ithil
Summary: The first time she kisses him, she’s seventeen with the weight of another boy’s bracelet around her wrist. It feels like the bravest thing she's ever done. Lit.


**Disclaimer: Don't own Gilmore Girls. **

**A/N the first:** Just the technical stuff, **Rory's PoV, Lit, starts at end of season two goes on post-series. Read, review, let me know what you think.**

**-**

**_This fic was inspired by Terra7 who wrote in a review: "Maybe being doomed isn't so bad."_**

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The first time she kisses him, she's seventeen with the weight of another boy's bracelet around her wrist. He kisses her back with all the fierceness of Hemmingway's prose and she tries not to think of things like that—prose and letters and words, because they don't mean anything compared to action, solid _acting _action, and it feels like a betrayal to everything she's ever believed in, truthfulness and reason (pros and cons, lists she saves in between the pages of books).

But she kisses him and it feels like the bravest thing she's ever done.

-

He slips his arm around her shoulders and she feels the weight of the entire town bearing down on them, can practically hear Ms. Patty's theater whisper, see the movement of firecracker red lips, "She left the bag boy for the hoodlum. And he was always so nice to her. But you know, every girl needs a bad boy now and again. It lets you appreciate the good ones."

Everyone has something to say about them.

All her mother is saying is that he's going to hurt her, because he's wrong, sharp in all the places Dean was only ever marshmallow soft in. Because he doesn't do movie nights and mother-daughter outings or twenty words a second—he gets in fights at school and smokes behind the diner and is impassive to all and any occurrences.

But Rory read Anne Frank when she was eight and she really does believe that there's goodness in everyone. She leans into the weight of his arm, turns her head into the curve of his shoulder and talks circles around them both. He listens and it's alright for now (she tells herself that's what matters).

-

She knows he's upset because he smells like cigarette smoke.

His smirk is sharper somehow, more likely to cut her when he presses his mouth against hers, and she knows that he and Luke are fighting again (Jess doesn't mention it but she's good at observing and deducting and these fights all leave the same signs for her to observe and deduct).

Jess starts talking without being prompted; she takes it as a sign to hope. He tells her about how he's thinking about going to New York for the day. What he doesn't say she sees in the hard line of his jaw, knows he misses the enormity of the city, the anonymity of it. She takes his hand and Jess presses his fingers against hers for a brief second before pulling away to reach for the book in his back pocket.

"Tell me when, maybe I can come along."

"Yeah, sure."

His mouth is still too hard when he nods.

-

He presses her down into the mattress. Rory can hear the chaos of Kyle's party—the band's amps trembling through the floor board—and she knows it's not right. His hands are too quick and his mouth is furious and uncaring against her lips. He tastes like cigarette smoke and it's all happening too quickly. Short and to the point, his fingers brushing her belt buckle and it's nothing like the teasing touches of week day afternoons when his fingers are firm and steadying on her hips. Her heart is beating so quickly it hurts inside her chest and she knows if she doesn't say something she won't stop, won't keep her promise her mother, won't do anything but let him take this some place she's not sure she's ready to go. (And it scares her, how some part of her, small and intoxicated by the nearness of him, doesn't see what's wrong with that).

-

He leaves. Her phone rings at odd hours and no one answers when she asks who's there. She tells him that she won't love him anymore and tries to sound sure of herself. Jess doesn't say anything and Rory tells herself that she tried (she tells herself that's what matters).

-

When Jess tells her that he loves her she can't stop the feeling in her belly, the open faced feeling of inevitability, of something like memory, rushing to the surface of her skin.

There's the prickle of uncertainty in her mouth, resonating like the after taste of weeks spent waiting for him to (come back) call. He tells her that he loves her and it's the quiet sincerity to it all that hurts the most, because she recognizes it, picked it out herself from between stoic passivity and pithy silences. She remembers the prom she never went to and watches him run away.

-

Yale is lonely. Too many people and Rory is hardly special. She misses her mother and misses her home (she misses Luke's coffee and town meetings and the monkey lamp). Sometimes she misses having somebody boyfriend-like, someone to hold hands with, someone to walk with from place to place just because there's time enough, someone to touch just because you can.

-

Jess asks her to run away with him because he knows they're right, because they belong together. He says it like its all capital letters, the mysteries of the universe answered by this one truth, like it's all they can ever need or want or have.

The certainty Rory could never cultivate in their time together is staring her down in the doorway of the place she thought she could forget him in. _Don't do this_, she thinks. Because she's hated him with a passive-aggressive dormancy it's taken her a year to perfect. Most days he is nothing more than a scribbled note in the corner of a page or a familiar song or the dull ache of unrequited trust.

"No." she says, feigned strength and confidence—because nothing ever made her as unsure about herself as he did-does, and she can still feel the pressure of his mouth, Hemmingway prose, and the bravery of it. And maybe she can see it, New York City lights and him (because they could never exist inside the fishbowl of Stars Hallow, not when neither of them could breathe under the constant weight of pre-approved disapproval). But the idea is taken under by the uncertainty, by their history of hurt and their lack of comfort and his momentary epiphany isn't enough.

_No._

She closes the door.

-

Somewhere between the Tower of London and the Globe, Rory lets herself wonder whether it wouldn't have been better (for Dean and Lindsey, for her mother, for her) if she hadn't said yes instead. Or maybe, she could have at least asked him in. They could have talked. They used to be good at talking ( just never about the things that mattered, Rory reminds herself. No, she decides somewhere between the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, no, it wasn't an option).

-

Logan teases and prods, won't allow her to settle into the prefectly constructed spaces she's made for herself. He challenges her with a raised eyebrow and a wolfish grin, too much of a character for Rory to try and understand. He makes her laugh, nervous laughter and giddy laughter and everything in between. His hands are warm on her hips and his eyes crinkle in the corners when he laughes at her (she doesn't feel tiny next to him, thinks about how she worried that Dean would cover her whole and never let her go and realizes that she doesn't have to worry with Logan. She likes that.). Logan's causal and Rory breathes easy with him, tries not to look farther than what's right there for both of them to see.

-

When Jess finds her again, she's all grown up, gin and tonics still wet at the back of her throat. And its surprising because he's grown up too, standing in her grandmother's drive way. He's taller somehow, standing straight—and it's not the overbearing confidence of her memories but something lighter, realer.

She's embarrassed by the room her grandmother's put her in, overwrought and decadent. They used to make fun of these sorts of things.

-

He tells her that she's not herself anymore. "You wouldn't know." she wants to say, except for how he's absolutely right.

-

She finds him in Philadelphia and kisses him. He tastes like red wine and nicotine gum. But his mouth is still the Lost Generation opening up against her lips. And she's seventeen all over again, the weight of Logan on her mind as real as the weight of Dean's bracelet on her wrist. There's no bravery to this at all, no impulse that can be kept safe in the shade of the trees. His mouth slants familiar under hers, persistent and sure—except she's more likely to cut him this time—and he's kissing her with all the things she ever thought she believed in, honesty and trust and reason. All the things that went askew with him.

But she can't blame him this time.

-

They talk after Philadelphia. Minute phone calls and post cards he sends the diner and book reviews that appear sporadically in her inbox. After Yale he invites her to another open house but she's in Kansas and the timing doesn't allow for more than twenty roll over minutes while she's waiting at a bus depot.

He keeps her in good titles that she reads during long hours on the bus and she sends her replies every third Tuesday of the month. Sometimes it's like being seventeen on Luke's couch debating Fitzgerald and Ryn and Austin. Like nothings changed at all. (But the difference—age and time and experience—weighs the words down like stones and it's all Rory can do to keep from getting trapped beneath them.)

-

She never tells him about Logan's proposal. One day it comes up, black-and-white print in her mail box, causally flung out, '_What happened to the blonde guy?_'. '_Went our separate ways_', she replies and they just don't talk about it after that.

She imagines him with other women, short, thin, pretty. Maybe a kind of deep-well writer type who smokes clove cigarettes, leaves rings of red lipstick on the filters. Some girl with a heart-shaped face and tastefully smudged mascara. Rory's not entirely sure she's really imagining a woman for Jess most of the time (at least not for the Jess she used to know, she's not sure she knows this Jess well enough to be sure yet).

She never asks if he's seeing anyone.

-

The first Christmas she comes home she's surprised to find him, holding Doula while talking to Luke. Her mother's house is full of people, Sookie and Jackson and her grandparents and Lane with her twins and all the people who've made her, and finding him among them shakes something inside her loose.

"I knew you were a teddy bear under your prickles Mr. Grinch," she jokes and the smile that comes with it is a creature unto its own self.

"The Grinch had fur or some type of impressive body hair." He jostles Doula and the little girl frowns, all her brother's seriousness coming down hard in the lines of her face. "Merry Christmas to you I guess, you intrepid reporter."

"Merry Christmas." She replies and it's a cheap Hallmark tiding that's worn thin on her tongue, but she doesn't know what else is appropriate that the moment. Asking him why he's here just doesn't fit it with the festivities.

-

They ring in midnight together on a roof over Time Square—New York is a crowded mess of drunks and optimists and Dick Clark is ringing it in like he has every year she can remember—and he tells her he's happy. "That this worked out. Y'know, you and me, being friends again."

She raises her drink, Dr. Pepper in a plastic martini glass. "Me too." And it's the best toast she has to give, sincere and hopeful, and he raises his cup and together they drink. They miss the countdown, brought out of their conversation by the sounds of celebration that erupt at midnight.

Auld Lang Syne is carried up with the cheers and she watches confetti and balloons fall as the New Year is received. _"Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?"_ croons over the speakers and he shakes his head. "Never knew the words to this song."

-

Jess is standing at the alter and her heart is going a mile a minute. It doesn't make sense. She squeezes her mother's arm and her mouth squeezes back so hard Rory almost winces. Luke's eyes are wet and red-rimmed and it's so weird to see Luke cry because he's Luke, their Luke, who made pancakes and fixed broken windows. They reach the alter and Mom stumbles just a little, clings a little harder to Rory's arm. Rory's happy for them, she really is so happy, because it took them a long time to get to this point but they made it in the end, but now she's handing Mom's hand over to Luke and she doesn't want to. Rory's never been good with letting things go. Mom's crying too now, pulls her hand out of Luke's long enough to hug Rory like she'll never get another chance and Rory joins in the tears because she can't help it (she never liked being left out). She gets a second chance at handing her mother over, makes some joke about finally being made honest, and she watched Luke's fingers tighten, watches her mother squeeze his hand.

The ceremony starts and Jess makes a face at her while the judge goes on and she sticks her tongue out in return.

-

They kiss—a mutual meeting of mouths that makes her memory stir beneath the thin layer of lip gloss she wears—and his fingers clasps hers like he's afraid she'll go away. The wedding party can still be heard in the distance and paper lanterns overhead light the pathway back to the Dragonfly. They pull apart and she can't look at his eyes, fixes her eyes on his mouth instead, captivated by the corner of something vicious that she's afraid only pretends to have softened with time.

"It never works," he says and she wants to ask when he became such a realist. "I don't want to mess this up." His free hand gestures back and forth between them, waves lazily at the world, like it's more than just a matter of two hearts at hand.

"We never really had the chance." She replies, and it sounds like condemnation but it's just the truth. He was never going to stay and she wasn't smart enough to see he needed more of her than she could give as seventeen.

"We have one now?" he asks, and his fingers are cold against hers. She wants to kiss him again, wants to slant their mouths together and find something new, something they haven't touched yet. Rory thinks back to Miss Patti's gossip mill and Taylor's disapproving stares, her mother's sideway glances of distrust. Rory thinks about his hands on her hips and his eyes when he told her that he loved her years and years ago. She thinks about who he is now and who she wants to be and thinks nothing weighs so heavily as wasted possibility.

"We could." She says. It feels like bravery.

-

End

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**A/N the Second:** I love Jess and Rory and I love authors who can tackle Lit after the series. I've tried and just never know how to get them back together after Philly. This was my attempt at that. Sadly, I had to start from the beginning and the thing is that, I basically feel like I'm just repeating myself as far as the Lit relationship goes. So I wanted to put that out there because I know there are fabulous writers out there who might spare some knowledge on how to overcome this.


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